It's only Wootz if it's grown in the Woot region of France, otherwise it's just called sparkling Damascus.

This is a great study, thanks! Great work by all, particularly Spencer on making and providing this Wootz!

Thank you so much for doing this. This will be a great place to send people who constantly rattle on about wootz being some type of indestructible super steel.

If "Wootz" is referencing the ancient material - then I think making it with modern methods in bulk would affect the term used - like lab grown gems vs natural. Your tangents were not a distraction and appreciated in fact as it's hard to balance the myth of steel with the practicality of modern science.

I like what FZ Knives does with his crucible “Wootz” He uses modern steels from drill bits/tool steel types mixed with powdered steels, carbon and other alloying agents. Beautiful patterns that have got to be much tougher than historical wootz.

I always enjoy your content. Your website has helped me a lot in understanding metallurgy in general. Ive learned more about metallurgy from your videos/website than I have from any of my university material science courses and really appreciate how you put to rest a lot of the debates about what is best wether it be damascus, super-steels, etc. I look forward to seeing what you do next👍

Well, we all know that you can't get the *legendary* hardness without quenching it in the blood of your enemies, so there's your problem. Seriously though -- great video, great scientific approach, and I'd love to see more with other combinations for a "better, modern wootz."

Very good video. One nice inclusion is the acknowledgement that there is a vast variety of wootz compositions as well as heat treatments, each with vastly different material properties

This is the video i was looking for all these years

Woot

Thank you very much Larrin for this great study and video!

Thank you Larrin!

Fascinating, as usual!

Interesting discussion.. thanks for sharing

"We can make better steel today". I can hear them coming out of the wood work 🐜 🪰🪳🪳🦟

If you haven't yet, a good book to look into is Medieval Islamic Swords and Swordmaking: Kindi's Treatise 'On swords and their kind' by Robert G. Hoyland and Brian Gilmour. I read through it last year, and while the wording isn't the clearest in English, it seemed to me that the wootz swordsmiths had a pretty good understanding of optimizing hardness and toughness for the particular blade through changes in heat treatment.

Good video!! Awesome stuff!!! Really nice to see someone not always cranking out high carbide or super steel videos.

Great video, very insightful.

Yea boyy another KSN vid!

you're such a knife steel nerd omg!! i love it

I would love to see a paper/video on how to improve wootz. Peter Schwartz-Burt is another maker to consider for his wootz

Great information! I'd definitely love to see the 52100 woots!

Like always, very interesting video! Thanks! I would like to see 52100-wootz steel. And some kind of modern wootz-pattern springsteel, if its even possble 😀

This was really interesting, I always wondered how the legendary Damascus lived up to the hype with all those stories out there about it cutting through other swords and such. I guess they are just that though, over embellished stories. With toughness test low it'd certainly suffer from a major edge crack if not a complete blade fracture if you tried to cut another sword.

Gosh that Wootz is beautiful! Good info here

Finally someone using proper terminology for pattern welded steel and Damascus.

I was just thinking about this a couple days ago. Weird. Thanks!

Knerd! Awesome work.

Bastante informativo 🤜🤛

Very interesting.thank you

This was fantastic!! Thank you! I think toughness is the main property that gave wootz its mythical status. A sword that bends and springs back is far more valuable than a razor sharp edge. I think a modern wootz would make an amazing knife steel not necessarily for its superior performance but for its beauty. Needs to be consistently heat treatable. Definitely subscribing and can’t wait to see more! Oh and I think wootz should be defined as a traditionally manufactured or primitive crucible steel. Must include carbide structures but I don’t think we need to be more specific than that.

I remember reading years ago an article about a damascus viking wootz sword found in the sea near scotland. Microscopic image showed a black chrismastree like structure in rows. Unfortunately i don't remember which publication it was in

Love your Conte t, and bought your first book for a blacksmithing nerd friend of mine. 😁 Per the charts on your site, have you considered having someone code up a way for users to pick an arbitrary number of specific steels to chart? Seems like it would be easy to code, and would make it much simpler to compare steels.

love you research work and all hail magnacut king of steels

After listening to the precision in explaining how, what and why on a few videos I’d just really enjoy someone trying to argue with you on this topic. Hahaha Great stuff.

I really like my roselli uhc wootz carpenter's knife. It's supposed to be somewhere around 64-66hrc.

Looking at some of the charts I'd best very interested in seeing a show down between two san mai blades. One blade would have a core of 1084 with 15n20 jackets and the second blade would be a 15n20 core with 1084 jackets. It'd be interesting to see which one ended up tougher, harder, and had better edge retention or if they'd up pretty close to identical. I think the 15n20 jacket with 1084 would perform between than it's counterpart.

It's a fun and enlightening video. It's one of my favorites on your channel so far. Thanks.

You can have a sliding scale of definition for what is wootz, the ancient method and type being exactly wootz but all changes made to that process with whatever justification as a professional can also be considered wootz. People weren't strict with definitions in the past and it was probably just called that because of an area or something in the process. Saying that i'd love to see your rendition of wootz steel with modern techniques and understandings.

Good stuff.

I would call wootz only the original ancient material, that IIRC, was mined from a specific Indian region (and then the mine dried out and all future wootz items were recycled from those originals). Modern materials that are a) mono-steel (meaning not pattern welded [for those who are not steel nerds, that are not made by layering different kinds of steel and forge welding them together and then folded over and over to spread and further bond the layers - something that was done historically to improve the homogeneity of steels with inconsistent compositions]) and b) have clear patterns when etched should be called Wootz-like.

On the conversation of what is wootz. Maybe I'm not a purist but to me. 52100 is basically modern production wootz. Because of the banding it can have. M2 is high speed steel wootz A2 is air hardening die steel wootz I haven't messed with ingot stainless that has banding like that but I'm sure there a good stainless wootz candidate out there.

Examining the ancient steel at such an in depth level was fascinating. Unrelated tangent, but have they ever asked you to be a judge on forged in fire ? Lol and if so would you do it if scheduling issues were not a factor?

Wootsie daisy, I’ve never been and am still not sold on woots. Great content as always!

where can i purchase the knife shown in the video ??? it looks fantastic also this is some great scientific work

Please, make a video explaining about the s5 shock steel

Woot! A discussion on wootz!

You would think by the way in which people online talk about the quality of the steel produced in feudal times that the blacksmiths had magic powers.

Would be interesting to compare wootz and modern steels to traditional folded bloomery steel, like tamahagane or European bloomery steel. My understanding is that they achieved lower carbon contents through the bloomery process plus very specific forging processes… but this may be inaccurate.

It would be interesting to see a comparison of results of testing non-wootz contemporary blades, to see if it was actually better than other steels of the time? I don't know for sure, but I've heard of relatively recent studies that showed Viking blades to be much more complex than originally thought?

I produced a seax in 1080 with some great looking carbide banding on it after repeated etchings to show up the hamon. Never tried to repeat it, maybe I should. Even at the time I thought "hey, this looks like wootz".

Thank you for this analysis. I fear it may provoke more foolish controversy about what should really be called "Damascus" and perhaps open the door for well-meaning advocacy regarding what should properly be called Wootz. In any event, interesting steels, and all useful.

Very informative video, thank You very much! Need to watch it at least onece more to understand all that - and implate it into my current view to damascus steel. To me, there is no "this is the real" - those 2 methods of making "damascus Steel" are just two different ways to combine the elements for having the best of them into the final piece of steel that makes the cutting tool. I've got a first Edition of Manfred Sachse's Book "Damascus Steel". For me that boook is kind of a "holy grail" in books about damascus steel. He goes very much into patterns and how to create them (also letters in torn damascus eg for firearm barrels; some swords have been found, still unknown how they've been forged to get the pattern they have) and there is a relatively short chapter in that book called "Wootz - The REAL Damascus?" I'm fascinated of the art of makig the alloy in a crucible and then forge from a solid block. Especially when I see the more and more inflative use of borax in so many videos on KZfaq. Although some awesome blades are created that way, to me excessive use of Borax is not the "real high art" of making damascus steel. One of my favorite Knife-making channels on KZfaq is borax-free; the guy of "FZ-making knives" also uses springs, ball bearings, razor- or scalpel blades,... as source for his knifes, but he makes them of Wootz Steel. Awesome knifes!

can you make a video on magnacut Damascus

Wootz is a specific forging process/ technology/ heat treatment.

Would cryo treatment help with pearlite conversion in woots or does cryo only help with higher chromium steels?

I've got a question about 'grain' of the steel, AKA if there's a curve in the steel, that's forged out, rather than grinded or CNC-machined, which one's stronger? How does, or how could this affect knifemaking? There's a lot of debate about forged steel with that or just cutting a knife out from a steel blank, and I usually forge mine close to the dimensions anyway. And I mean pretty close sometimes. I think the tip of the blade is important, that you cut it diagonally (backwards) and then forge it into the desired correct angle, which the 'grain' of the steel shifts to that direction. Correct me, if that's wrong though. I'd like to hear your insight about this.

Wootz is not the older of the two styles of forging. Pattern welding was done for centuries before metallurgists were able to reach the temperatures required to make Wootz. But calling pattern-welding Damascus came about long after Wootz steel became commonplace.

I have a question about your tables on the website. When you give a steel a rating, 1-10, for toughness and edge retention, is that score relative to only those steels in the same category, I.e. stainless? For example 1095 has a toughness rating of 4.5, while 14C28N/AEB-L has a toughness rating of 9. Are 14C28N/AEB-L really that much tougher than 1095?

While it is probably not possible to do “real” tests without a time machine. I am curious if you have data or opinions about historic wootz vs mono vs pattern welded steel qualities.

I'll watch this video later this afternoon but I'm forsure excited being I have a huge wootz collection lol also. Please tell me your thoughts on sld magic

wootz and damascus steel both seem like they were made from scraps of traditionally folded iron just chucked into a crucible, "Can't do anything with this nugget, lets try and put it in a clay jar with some dry leaves, sand, and an animal tooth to give it some power." and created early steel

the original Damascus was called such because thats where Europeans believed it was from. I believe the ore( with trace amounts of vanadium) came from an area in Modern day Jordan. Original Damascus is a type of Wootz steel but not all wootz is Damascus. Pattern welded steel was called "Damascus"such because it first tried to imitate the natural pattern ( caused by the vanadium I believe) seen in true Damascus.

Hey Larin, do you know approximately how much nitrogen it takes to get the same hardening effect as .1% carbon?

Heavy forge is another channel that is very good at this.

I think wootz as a term is best used understood as a historical and archaeological term rather than a metallurgical one. It was a term used to describe blades from a specific period of time that when subjected to the processes of that time led to a characteristic visual and performance characteristic. Modern Wootz-like steel can be produced but it will never be the Real Deal. This definition isn't very useful in the context of this video though and also provides space for reddit wootz supremacists to fortify their beliefs. In any other setting though it likely provides the most accuracy and utility.

Is steel making perlite the same as in gardening? The gardening is some kind of volcanic rock pebbles that turn to dust when you push your fingers together. Also I had no idea steel/blademakers and friends are so deep in the scientific studying of I guess metallurgy? I'm studying mechanical engineering and this is quite fascinating. I should know a lot about steels but let's face it it's barely introductory "there's a lot of steels and they have different properties, use S355 but know that cast iron and steel are different to manufacture".

If Wootz is actually not very tough, why was it so highly prized as a material for warfare sword blades?

As the TCC chart gets more crowded I wonder if a CATRA medium that’s less abrasive would be better so you can get larger variations between steels.

Interesting, I never heard the argument of “if it’s not made in Wootz Region, it’s not wootz.” Before. That seems much to simplistic. I would expect that Wootz is either the metal composition or method of making the steel, or both. Since we can’t analyze ancient examples we can answer half the question. But I always heard the method of manufacture was lost to time.

My understanding of Wootz developed as traditional Damascus when pattern welded steels, and their popularity supplanted traditional Damascus in popular dialect as Damascus. I think I saw Al Pendry trying to recreate the types of steel ingots traded around Damascus in Syria during the Ottoman Empire. That kind of ingot steel became colloquially known as Damascus steel. Wootz seems to be some misinterpretation of an Indian word for ingot steel.

FZ making knives on here does some pretty nice damascus knives

This is always a grenade-like subject on steels, everyone running around screaming. In terms of a definition I think if its made as a traditional crucible and material content that's producing the properties its known for (visually and composition) then it comes into the bespoke, hand made steels prior to heavy industrialisation. Which means I kind of lump it into the same sort of category as things like various hand made steels from SE-Asia and Japan or Bulat steel. Not being mean, its just a unique steel in every batch that will have some variations. As say compared to the industrial steels we use today which tend to be a little more rigorous in their composition... mostly! After a recent dalliance into low-alloy, very low manganese content high carbon steels. They are really their own animal when it comes to heat treatment, my fast-oil was inconsistent and I switched over to Aqua-Quench which can deliver that 'near water' hardness (1.5-8.5 ratio) along with the living on the edge anxiety of having many hours of work crack and die. I've since switched over to using it on my 26C3 knives and probably won't go back to oil on them. Heavy Forge has always done some really fantastic work so he's worth checking out for his artistry as well.

Its interestig you are seeking martensite. I weld on high alloy steels like a514 and hardox, and i have to preheat and keep the weld area hot for a time after welding explicitly to avoid martensite forming, bu letting the weldment cook slowly we know it retains the composition of the original alloy.

Even if Wootz isn’t superior to modern steels I can still understand the romanticism of an ancient technique. Same justification as the interest in mechanical watches as opposed to much more accurate quartz watches. For me, I’ll take modern powder steels 😬.

This kind of takes me back to a local community college prof swearing that tamahagane was superior to modern steels... methinks his references on this subject were largely chambara films.

I really wish we just used PWS instead of damascus. Fine damasteel can use the name but everything else is just something else entirely. Aren’t the solid phase diffusion bonds even imperfect? Or is the steel fully homogenous? The name “Alabama damascus” seems to be the least misnomer of them all, as they’re denoting it’s like damascus only different in a few ways.

I think the trouble is that the stories of wootz superiority come from a time where other bladed weapons maybe weren't as good, or were most often up against lower technology steels and so definitely were an improvement, and some of the stories may even be some early propaganda... Careful fighting people from this region because they have wootz which can do all these amazing things... Also I think that to call a steel wootz, it must be made the same way, using the same materials as it was historically. However i think that the process could be used with modern technique but then should be renamed so as to distinguish it from the historic.

The ancients had no way to beat modern quality control. With that said, I think Wootz steel swords were better than pattern welded steel swords at the time.

best modern wootz ive seen is from 'FZ Making Knives'

I loved this vid. Yes, all that stuff is Wootz. It is a banded struture not created through planned, human designed pattern welding. I always remind my students in electrical engineering that a "class D amplifier" and a "VFD" and a solar "inverter" are all the same thing with a maginally different design goal. They are all switched mode, 2/3 level DC/AC converters. One is controlled for linearity, one drives motors and one feeds the grid. The physics.....are the same.

Do the Ulfberht swords count as wootz, or are they just pattern welded "Damascus"?

Good time to fall back and punt. For the sake of everybody else saying it "Damascus" is the name of a town on the East side of the Mediterranean ocean. For the past hundreds of years the secret to the steel made there has been considered as part of their lost art. "Woots" steel has been considered the finest of the available European steels. Our current information about those arts is lacking as the cost of steel has changed considerably. It was roughly 1780 that would mark the beginning of the end of most of the previous methods of steel making. Knife steel nerds: Your testing methods are a bit too internet trendy. Try sharpening a piece of ATS34 to a thirty degree included angle and measure "edge holding" based on its ability to whittle spruce with the grain. Keep the temper to within a practical sharpenability. If the want to cut Kevlar or open boxes they can buy a disposable razor. We are talking about a professional tool that is used every day. My experience is that it defiantly will get sharper after a few hours work.

Have you had the opportunity to see how damasteel is made?

Let’s see how much better this is than bloomery steel .

I import wootz from Rajasthan india. Could I send you one to take a look at and test. Looks dendritic

I have 2 knives made from Bulat, Russian version of wootz steel. One of them is not so good, the maker claims 64 HRC which I don't believe. Would you be interested to test it? I will send it, free, it has no use for me... (I am in Boston area). The other one is at least made very well, Russian style hunting knife, sits on the display shelf for years, maybe one day I'd use it.

I'm all for making the definition require the material be made in tiny shops.

All I know is the steel is so beautiful

I shall link this to anyone looking for a debate.

Rex-121 & Magnacut Wootz-Damascus Go! You can do it!!

I've gptta ask, can any blade, sacred magical wootz included, slice a scarf in the air? The physics I know won't allow it.

Can you speak to the myth of wootz blades needing to be quenched in blood? What would that do from a metallurgy perspective?

Modern steel is better, I had no doubt. But the question is why was damascus steel so revierd in ancient times. How does it compare to other steels of it's time. Does the vanadium content have an influence. Maybe it was just the distinct look....

Only the Wootz is true Damascus steel and only made from the exact materials which we now know the formula.

😂😂 i just throw various scrap ends in a cup and melt it. Glad my ignant ass found this channel.

At what % chromium does steel become stainless?

stainless wootz

У нас в России целые конференции проходят в спорах о том, что является сталью Вутц (Булат) Вот самый известный кузнец попытался дать ему определение kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ac5mdZOdldS0nqM.htmlfeature=shared

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